Wednesday, May 02, 2007

We're sorry for those of you who are used to daily updates out of us...but we're back for a new round on this Wednesday. We think we give you the best publishing frequency you're likely to get out of a site that doesn't charge for subscriptions, after all...

DEELY AND WDOK: No less an authority than WDOK/102.1 program director Scott Miller has checked in with your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm) about a rare bit of uncertainty at the CBS Radio Cleveland AC outlet.

A number of OMW readers caught now-former WFHM/95.5 "The Fish" afternoon driver Dan Deely, who left the Salem Cleveland CCM station, on WDOK on Saturday afternoon.

PD Miller checked in with OMW to let us know:

"Dan Deely was gracious enough to step in and help me with a scheduling problem on Saturday.

WDOK actually believes that having a live jock on the air. Even on the weekends."

Ah, but as we noted in our item at the start of this week, WDOK has something very rare right now - a gaping hole in its full-time schedule in afternoon drive, thanks to the recent departure of Chris Fox.

Is Dan Deely in line for the job? Scott Miller isn't saying:

"I've had number of very talented people in my office over the past 3 weeks. Dan is one of them."

Scott says we should know about a new afternoon drive host for WDOK, whoever it is, later this week.

Now, the above is basically everything the WDOK PD had to say about this to us. He gave no indication of his decision.

But we wouldn't be surprised to see market veteran Dan Deely in afternoon drive when it's all said and done. That's just a gut feeling here...in part because it would seem to be a perfect fit.

Oh, and Scott reminds us about something we never got around to mentioning - the 20th anniversary at WDOK of midday host Nancy Alden. Now, that's longevity!

CHERRY LANDS: We recall spending some time determining the job status of Steve Cherry, then program director of Clear Channel AC WLZT/93.3 in the Columbus market.

As it turns out, Cherry was indeed let go in that large round of job cuts at the CC Columbus cluster.

But he's now landed.

AllAccess reports that Cherry has taken a job at NextMedia in suburban Chicago, as program director of hot AC WZSR/105.5 "Star 105.5" and operations manager of both WZSR and urban oldies WWYW/103.9 "Y103.9".

But there's more than just a "Columbus radio guy lands in new gig" story here.

Cherry and NextMedia group programming VP Harve Alan are both former Akron radio types. Alan, at Rubber City Radio's WAKR/1590, and Cherry, at the company's country WQMX/94.9 - we believe before WAKR/WONE made WQMX a sister station. (We're sure those with longer memories can fill that blank in.)

Quoting Cherry from the AllAccess item:

"It's great to work with HARVE again. The last time we saw each other was pouring over diaries at ARBITRON when we both worked in AKRON."

That's Northeast Ohio again, the crossroads of media...

AND A CLARIFICATION: When we posted the item below about WJW/8 "FOX 8" news director Greg Easterly's rise to the station's general manager post, we were under the impression that it wasn't widely known.

There are policies we try to hold to, without exception. One of them is "giving credit where credit is due".

Though we did not get the story either directly or indirectly from Ms. Washington, and our primary source was direct, we didn't know her article was up online. (It apparently didn't make it into the Dead Trees edition of the PD, and we hadn't looked at the Entertainment blog for a long while.)

In the past, we've also not been used to newspaper reporters covering the media beat getting things right, let alone getting a jump on us, after all...so our kudos to Julie Washington, and our sincere apologies for A) missing the item and B) not noting that she had already put the item out...

14 comments:

I hope WDOK does not hire Deely for the afternnon spot. He is very indescript, vanilla and would not be the best choice for an afternoon drive spot. If it were me doing the hiring, I'd look to bring back Revenna Micelli. She was GREAT for years on 105.7, especially the biz to biz segment. She could bring some personality and listener interest to the station. And man, think of Nancy Alden handing off to Ravenna. Watch the ratings for women 18-35+ sky rocket. Bring back some personality to the air waves. Ravenna should be doing more than traffic she has far too much talent.

Though we don't know how she'd do in a straight-ahead AC format, we'd have to agree...Ravenna would pretty much be at the top of the "underused Cleveland radio personalities" list (along with former WMJI co-hort Scott Howitt).

But careful with all the "free promotion" here - you're getting close to the guys who promote the old WKNR Saturday Sports Show crew of young producers/board ops/etc. :)

The difference here, of course, is that Ms. Miceli is a proven professional, ratings getter and personality.

Concerning Nancy Alden's anniversary: Do I understand that it's 20 years in that shift? I'm almost certain that she started at WDOK in a different shift around 1984 (it might have been evenings). It was during the time that she did the "Lady in Red" promotion.

In any event, her longevity at WDOK is remarkable, and so is Nancy. Congratulations!

I work for an ad agency here in Cleveland that does business with radio and was turned on to this site a couple of weeks ago from a friend that works at Clear Channel (and loves your blog). She also gave me the URL for Ravenna’s own web site and that got me to thinking.

I was the person that commented on Jen Toohey moving to afternoon drive as a good thing though I am a little past their target demo.

In turn I passed your URL on to another friend who is not in the media business but a fan of radio nonetheless and also my age.

We are both huge fans of Ravenna and that is the reason for our comments. It is not a formal campaign or a fan club to bring her back. I have met and worked with Ravenna for one of our clients and really enjoyed her when she was on middays.

My friend doesn't know her but her company did play on Biz 2 Biz Trivia once (and lost).

I did not mean to insult Dan Deely if that is the bone of contention regarding my post. I am just stating my opinion. He is a good “radio voice” but not the k personality that would fit with the musical direction WDOK is going in.

I don't see a problem with a station having two women back to back. No one ever said that about male radio announcers. With WDOK targeting women it makes sense to have women relate to us. I think it makes a positive statement.

I apologize if this is a site that only radio employees should contribute to. Since this site is read by radio people (at least the WDOK program director) we thought we could drum up some support for her.

We both would like to hear Ravenna back on the air in a regular shift and with WDOK being closest format to the music we like since we listen to Nancy Alden (I met her. A very nice gal and Happy Anniversary). It just makes sense that Ravenna would be a perfect addition to the station for the drive home.

Why all this Dan Deely bashing? The guy is a professional and he was good on Q104. Although Q104 had a lot of older men on a HOT AC station which never made any sense to me. I say Dan is perfect for WDOK.

We're just a bit paranoid about this sort of thing. You weren't here for a series of comments that made it sound like the entire sports radio world was clamoring for a Saturday morning show hosted by young broadcasters. :)

Feel free to post, and contribute. As we mentioned above, we (in general) happen to agree with you about Ms. Miceli, who deserves a higher profile platform than she has now.

But though we haven't listened much to Mr. Deely since he has been on "The Fish", we sense he'd fit in the WDOK slot quite well.

Expressing opinion is encouraged here. We're just trying to ensure that people don't "astroturf" the site by creating a buzz posting under various anonymous identities.

After the winter book WDOK just had, Mr. Miller might be better served looking st Selector rather than internet blogs. Mr. "we're proud to be live with real people" got his arse handed to him by voicetracks playing on a computer across town.

Dan Deely is a good choice, but for my money, Bob McKay hands down. No offense to Dan, who is solid, but Bob should be fulltime in Cleveland.

and speaking of the winter book, what the hell happened to WDOK, WQAL and WMVX?

** WAKR and WONE were bought out by then (and current) WQMX owner Thom Mandel in April 1994, who organized Rubber City Radio after the purchase. Hence, WQMX is billed as the companies flagship and not WAKR.

** Nancy Alden DID host the overnight shift on WDOK from 1987 to 1997, when she took over for Ted Alexander. At that time, Alexander was substituting for morning voice "Tall Ted" Hallaman on WRMR (who was flipped over to afternoons in favor of Bill Randle during that period) and stayed in production afterwards.

** Note too, that Nancy was one of the original WNCX staffers, and left not long after Metropolis' Jim Halper botched the Gorman/Sanders Rock/CHR format.

** Oh, and Ravenna owns the rights to the "Biz-to-Biz Trivia" name (pointed out in her long-gone WELW bio).

OK, history buffs, I remember that Dan Deely first came to town to work on the original WMJI 105.7, when Larry Robinson owned it along with WBBG/1260, the "Big Band Grandstand", and it had just flipped from WWWM, M-105, to a "soft rock" format. My memory tells me he and his wife at the time did afternoon drive as a team. They split up, and she stayed in town for a while, and may still be here, but I can't recall her name! Do you folks?I also remember Dan as a part-time weatherman on 43 and 19 in the mid-'90's. A great guy, and a real pro.

Nancy Alden also worked at WKDD back when it had a "Mellow Rock" format before it was sold and changed to its CHR/Top 40 format. Personally, I thought the Mellow Rock format was great, just 10-15 years ahead of its time. {And the AM side, WCUE, had the ever popular "Music Of Your Life" format which had about 13 listeners}